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annoyed

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I am so angry with Mira Dee that I could just spit. Oldman and I had worked it all out and we were going to have a little reading-and-writing competition today. If I won I got to keep the purse I nicked from him on the boats and he was going to tell me where he got it (as much as he remembered) and I would have either given it back or kept it (though I might have split it with Oldman; he needs it more than I do, but he’d die before he’d admit that). If he won he got it back and my hands were washed of it. Or so I thought.

But stupid Mira overheard us talking and she told everyone that Oldman and I were going to have a DUEL at half past two (I suppose they all wanted to watch, which is bollocks) and someone told Jeremy Wood. Of course now I have lines to do and I’m going to miss tea, and Jack has lines to do too. We have both lost twenty-five points for stealing and we are going to get a lecture from Mathers. In addition to that I am going to get a lecture from Addie, I just know it. Or worse, she’ll be disappointed. I’d rather be yelled at or switched, honestly. At least then it would be over.

Jeremy Wood is delighting in this and it’s all because Addie’s my sister, I know. He’s off in town having fun (he thinks a girl named Pippa is in love with him, but she really likes Hector Smith, and really, who doesn’t?) and Jack and I are stuck here writing lines.

I hope that Addie doesn’t tell our Pappa. I would die. And Mamma would switch me, for that. She said if I wanted to light candles to Laverna, fine, but I’d better not get caught doing anything stupid, and of course, I have. It’s not that I want really to take things from people. I would probably have given it all back. But I want to be able to. I’m not sure anyone will understand that.

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sleepy

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I can’t believe I am going to be late to breakfast, but I have never been so tired in all my LIFE. I am sharing a room with Mira Dee and Jennie Mablin and they talked half the night. They are nice enough girls (though neither one of them can keep a secret) but they are so noisy! I feel rather cross with both of them at the moment even though I do rather like them because it took me twenty minutes under the shower to feel like a human being again. They put ‘lights out’ on our timetable. I wish they could put ‘quiet time’ on our timetable and enforce that, too. It doesn’t matter if the room is dark when I can hear them giggling. If they would only whisper I wouldn’t mind it so, but I swear I think Mira is made of India rubber!

I would complain to Miss Pendry, but that would just get Jennie in trouble, because she wouldn’t be able to listen, and I don’t want to do that. Perhaps I shall tell Addie about it. I think Jennie thinks I don’t like her at all any more, which isn’t true--I just don’t feel I can tell her things like I did before. I have to be very careful what I say to Jennie, only not because I don’t know what she will do with the information yet, but rather because I have no control whatsoever over who she tells and what they might do. It’s a very uncomfortable feeling, just like the feeling I get when I see Dory Crockford. I know I ought to say something, because she is so very lonely, but I want to run away when she mentions her parents and how sad she is about them, because they’re not good people and I know I could never make her understand that--and even if I could, she wouldn’t stop loving them.

Alanna doesn’t understand why Dory and Silvia can’t talk to each other right now. I really need to find a good way to explain that to her before she gets Silvia in all sorts of trouble trying to ‘help them be friends’. I hope we can get all of this worked out sometime soon, but I don’t see much hope for it, and Addie doesn’t understand it any better than Alanna does. It’s awful being in the middle, though of course not as awful for me as it is for Dory and Silvia.

Theo Abbott looks as miserable as I do. He’s in the middle of everything, too. I should go and sit with him, but Addie will have saved me a place; perhaps I can get her to save him one too at luncheon? I still have the purse Oldman nicked. I wish I knew who he nicked it from. I could ask Florian if he recognizes the crest but then he’ll have an opinion about it. I suppose I’ll have to find time to learn heraldry.

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diffident

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Random thoughts from an overcrowded hansom cab:

* Some people who think they can drive a carriage are gravely mistaken.

* I like my cousin Alanna and my cousin Justin. Their father is another matter entirely. I am still very curious about the mundane world, but motorcars and the cinema cannot possibly make up for attitudes like that.

* I still have very mixed feelings about the entire Academy business. It seems rather unfair that within a month of getting my father under our roof I have to leave home.

* I should be more excited about seeing Jennie again, but apparently my parents realised that if they forbade us to write letters and see each other before school, I’d have to think about everything my father said about her and her family in general, and I’d realise I can only be so well acquainted with someone so indiscreet. Also I do not like the way she treats Florian and Theo even if Florian is rather bossy--I saw it when we visited the Leffoys.

* I should be more excited about seeing Silvia again, but she is so very childish at times and I’ve got used to being in the company of people who understand what I say the first time.

* I should be more excited about seeing Dory again, and I certainly do feel sorry for her as it is not her fault her parents betrayed my parents that way, but the fact is, I dread it, because I have no earthly idea what to say. ‘I’m sorry your parents are on the Forgotten Isle’? Well, actually, not. People had just stopped staring every time I went out of the house, especially if Hadrian or Addie was with me. And Princess Endymion can be ever so annoying, sometimes, but he didn’t deserve that at all.

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confused

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A month ago I didn't even know for sure that Susie and Addie and Hadrian were my sisters and brother. Hadrian's barely lived here ten days. It was only on Monday that I saw him kissing Endymion.

Why do I miss them?

It's so strange to be awake in the morning and not hear their voices upstairs.

I guess we don't have to have kippers today.

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shocked

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Hadrian was kissing a boy on the kitchen stairs! And apparently he is the son of a man who hates my parents. Pappa told them to come into the house and eat breakfast with us, but I think there is going to be arguing after he leaves, on the way down to Dumnonia Cornubia Trevena.

I don’t know what to think about it. Hadrian’s friend is very pretty, but he is very strange! He won’t look Pappa in the eye and he blushes when Mamma looks at him and he won’t stop apologising for his father. Also, he lets Hadrian bully him awfully. I think he likes it. His clothes are very messy and he smells like booze. And Hadrian’s the same.

I thought Hadrian was still asleep when I came down this morning, but what I saw in his bed was a bunch of pillows, under the bedclothes! I will never get to be an Inquisitor if I keep falling for baby tricks like that. Poor show indeed. But why did he do that?

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sleepy

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Mamma had nightmares again last night. We were staying in the inn at Padstow so Father could be near the harbour, but I wish we’d stayed with the Goyles, because even though they are good about drawing curtains and setting wards, they take some of the wards down when they don’t need them any more, and she woke me up. That sounds rather cold, but if Father is with her, I don’t dare open her bed curtains, and he takes better care of her than I can. It’s not that I don’t care, but there is nothing I can do for her!

Father said he had fixed it so maybe I could see Jennie today, because his sworn man Abbott lives with her family. I will definitely get to meet Theodore Abbott, which will be nice, since Jennie talks about him rather a lot and Father said I would like him. And Michel said he’d met Theo, too. I wonder if Lady Goyle will let me take a nap until Theo and Jennie get here. I didn’t get enough sleep last night.

Father also said he needed to make sure that Abbott got compensated for the loss of his house as quickly as possible, so that he could get a place of his own, because even though the church is consecrated ground, he had forgot that it had ARISTOTLE in it, and he doesn’t think he likes the idea of one of his people living with ARISTOTLE, even if Abraxas was there as well. ARISTOTLE is Jennie’s dad; Father says he’s quite mad.

I have a brother and sister that I’ve never met. (I’ve met Susie before, but I didn’t know that she was my sister.) They’ll be at school. I wonder what I’ll think of them, and if it will ever be all right for me to let them know.

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disappointed

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I can’t believe that Jennie asked her father twice in a single day if she could come out here. Mamma says there’s nothing she can do—it’s the usual thing about how she’s not married to my father, and she’s sorry about it. But Jennie’s father is ‘not a nice man’ so she isn’t surprised.

My father said Jennie’s father is the sort of person who is liable to be found in the rubble of some building he’s blown up in the name of the Lord, and that no daughter of his will be present when that happens. I am too polite (and smart) to ask if that was true last month. Mamma said she was going to give Aristotle Mablin a piece of her mind, but my father said she couldn’t, because we need it all in one piece for the war. And that she’s beautiful when she is fierce and Jennie’s dad does not deserve to see it.

I’m not pleased that Jennie would think of blowing on her brother’s affair because he’s having fun, and she isn’t. Isn’t their father the problem, not him? I should sit down and think about this, but I don’t want to. I want to spend time with someone I haven’t known almost since I was born, and I know that if I tell my mother Jennie even thought about doing that, I will be instructed to think about what her character must be like. And I don’t want to do that.

Mamma has to go with Julian and St John and Father Amadeo to talk to the Leffoys tomorrow. I wanted to go—I want to see Florian again, even though he’s probably forgotten me—but Mamma said no. I must have looked like I was disappointed (I was), because Father said he'd take me out for the afternoon and then we'd meet Mamma for supper and Mamma said that he was spoiling me, but she smiled. I hope he doesn't get into trouble with his wife, but he told me not to worry about that.

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irritated

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Melina is being an idiot, and everyone is angry at everyone else because of the stupid thing she did. It was the sort of thing I would expect from Dimity, not her. I know she’s not over her broken engagement, but I wouldn’t want to be engaged to Marco Malaspina if he’s going to be so spineless. She’s a princess of Byzantium, even if it’s not worth tuppence at the bank.

Mamma cried yesterday, and I hate Melina a little for that. My father came, but he didn’t stay. I know he’s married to someone else, but I think it would have helped if he’d stayed. He and Zia Alessandra used to be friends, but now they’re angry with each other, and they both keep forgetting that Melina wasn’t made to do this stupid thing at gunpoint.

Tom Forrester was here with Mercutio all afternoon with the door closed and they say they were playing cards. He had to sneak out when they started fighting. This is going to end in tears and they’re not going to be mine.

I met an odd girl named Jennie yesterday outside of a shop. I liked her, and she’s going to be in Caerleon too. But it is very strange that she told me so much about herself while we were standing right out on the street.

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bored

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I’m eleven.

I’m eleven, Mamma’s better, the Dux Bellorum is my father, and Eustace Ramsden, whose little brother is not allowed to come over and play (even though he does, is with Dimity in the kitchen eating the last of the tiramisù while Mamma does charts that no-one is allowed to look at but her because they’re classified. (I wonder what Mario would think about Eustace being here if he knew. But he knows that Dimity is supposed to marry up, and that she doesn’t like him that way. This is awfully random. But that’s how I’m feeling.

Mercutio thinks he’s in love with Tom Forrester, and he lies about it. And it isn’t going to work out like he wants. He moped awfully over Dylan Vieira, who is Cousin Beatriz’ grandson, and I’m not looking forward to a repeat performance of this particular Greek tragedy. I like Tom Forrester, but I wish Dimity wouldn’t make eyes at him when Mercutio thinks he’s in love with him, Mario is mooning over her, there are loads of boys who write to her, and she has been snogging Eustace Ramsden.

I wish Florian Leffoy had come to my party. I haven’t seen him since we were little. I wonder if he even remembers me. It is so disappointing when people don’t.

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aggravated

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Silvia’s mother is angry with me because Silvia won’t eat rabbit any more, and she won’t stop crying about Bambi’s mother. And Mamma is angry because we went into the Danelaw without permission. How was I supposed to know that Silvia was going to take the cinema so seriously? I tried to tell her that it’s not really Thumper and that Thumper and Bambi aren’t real, she’s seen rabbits and deer and she knows they don’t talk—but she won’t believe me. This is awfully frustrating and not at all fair. I like the cinema and I am going back, but I am not taking Silvia.

I have figured out mundane money. The paper ones are like bank draughts, except you can give them to anyone. They are actually worth more than the coins. I didn’t have enough coins to get us all in, but the paper ones are worth so much that one of them did for all three of us. I’ll discuss this with Mamma when she isn’t so cross. Anything to do with numbers will always distract her. Right now there’s no trying to reason with her. Nor with Silvia, either.